The everyday routes look nothing like the occasion routes. The single-family blocks are where this volume goes: Monta Loma and Rex Manor north of Central Expressway, Sylvan Park, Slater and the Whisman blocks east toward the light-rail line, Martens-Carmelita and the streets behind Rengstorff Park, and the older southern belt of Cuesta Park, Waverly Park and Old Mountain View where the house numbers are readable from the curb and somebody is usually home. These are one-attempt deliveries with no drama, and they cover a big share of what we route in 94040 and 94043. The apartment corridors along El Camino Real, West Middlefield, San Antonio and Evelyn take the rest, and there the note does the work — callbox code, building letter, unit number. A word on heat, since this occasion is the one most likely to get left on a step: Mountain View gets essentially no rain from June to September, and the hottest afternoons of the year often arrive in September and October rather than July. A bouquet on a south-facing porch on one of those days has hours, not a day. Ask for a shaded placement, or send in the morning.
Thank-you deliveries are the workhorse of this occasion here, and each destination has a rule. Schools take front-office drops and only front-office drops — never a classroom mid-lesson — which covers Bubb, Landels, Huff, Castro, Monta Loma and Theuerkauf elementary, Graham and Crittenden middle schools, Mountain View High on Truman Avenue, St. Francis on Miramonte Avenue and Los Altos High just over the line; Teacher Appreciation Week in May and the last week of the school year are when the office counter fills up, so send a week off-peak and the gesture stands out more. Hospital thank-yous work differently: a bouquet addressed to a nurses' station or a unit break room at El Camino Health on Grant Road is a normal and welcome thing after a family has been through something, and unlike a patient delivery it carries no floor restrictions worth worrying about. In-home caregivers, physical therapists, the person who drives your parent to appointments — send to the home where they work and put their name on the card, because a card addressed to the household is a card they will not open.